As is well known, at airports the passengers and their luggage at the place of check in, are separated from each other; as a consequence, passengers and luggage each go their own ways.
One of the drawbacks of this kind of service is that automation has not been possible; as a consequence, the manual work has required a large staff. Administration of passenger transfer takes place at a reduced speed and due to frequent errors, reliability is rather dubious. Finally the capacity of the airplanes relating to the number of the passengers to pass is always less than the normal capacity. To make matters worse, seasonal fluctuation always results in confusion, mainly in peak travel periods.
According to international estimation, not even the most up-to-date computer-controlled system has been able to ensure 99% safety in routing the luggage even during peak hours when personal intervention beside the computered control has been provided.
It is also well known, that at the prevailing passenger service systems, where computer control is generally used, loading of the luggage is performed manually. In manual operation--due to frequent sorting and loading--damage to the luggage is unavoidable. A further disadvantage of manual luggage handling is that actions endangering the safety of the flight cannot be avoided.
Presently the transmitting capacity of airports is adversely affected by the complexity of the passenger flow, utilizing different corridors and gates.
In order to reduce these drawbacks the so-called plane-mate system and similar systems of the passenger transport have been proposed. The essence of these systems is that the passenger do not walk through different corridors to the airplane but after the requisite administration of the passengers and delivery of the luggage, the passengers are transported in a special passenger carriage to the airplane. The passenger space is lifted to the door height of the airplane, and the passengers may go directly to the airplane from the closed passenger carriage.
The system described has certain disadvantages. The main disadvantage is that the luggage travels along a separate path to the airplane. Since--as is well known--managing of the luggage requires much more time than passenger administration, the time needed for handling the luggage will determine the transmitting capacity of the airport.
A further disadvantage is that lifting and lowering the complete passenger carriage is slow and time-consuming operation, requiring a complicated and expensive structure. Due to its width, amounting to 3.5 to 5 m, the vehicle can traffic public roads only by observing the prescriptions valid for vehicles of special size. As a consequence, the vehicle cannot be used for transporting a group of passengers from a given place outside the airport to the airplane while travelling on a public road.
Various proposals have been made to separate baggage from passengers in air travel arrangements and even to provide transport of passengers to an aircraft in a bus-type vehicle with an elevatable stairway.
As far as we are aware, these systems are less than satisfactory for the reasons already mentioned. The vehicle systems themselves are also frequently inconvenient because practically in all cases the elevation and lowering of the exit end of the stairway imparts an arcuate movement thereto complicating the alignment of the door of the vehicle with the door of the aircraft and with the terminal passage ways when either the terminal passage ways or the aircraft doors may be on various levels at different occasions.